Modern society relies heavily upon the rapid dissemination of large amounts of information. Whether via the Internet or via community intranets, participation in the global community is regularly predicated upon network connectivity. Individuals and communities that cannot access these networks are at a considerable disadvantage as compared to their networked peers. Not only do disconnected communities lack access to information and services provided by the rest of the world community, but they also generally lack the infrastructure to improve intra-community communication as well.
While the need for Internet or local network access may be great in these communities, geographic and economic limitations may render typical delivery mechanisms unfeasible. Furthermore, these communities may lack the financial resources to support the introduction of high-bandwidth routers and access points provided by commercial conglomerates.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an economical method to introduce network access to communities in disparate geographic conditions.
The headings provided herein are for convenience only and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the claimed embodiments. Further, the drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be expanded or reduced to help improve the understanding of the embodiments. Similarly, some components and/or operations may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of discussion of some of the embodiments. Moreover, while the various embodiments are amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the embodiments are intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the disclosed embodiments as defined by the appended claims.